

Rupture was finally good and playable, because it applied Two-Handed Sword Mastery or/and Aspect of Berserker Ripping after explosion as Bleeding Damage, making it a key ability in the pure Bleed builds that combined really good with Weapon Master’s Aspect and Fields of Crimson. Shouts require no aspects and can be used with either Glyph Socket or Marshal or take much less important aspect slot on the ring. It also requires a very important armor aspect slot to provide Unstoppable and 20% damage reduction to be semi-efficient, which can be used otherwise to provide a strong defensive buff. Iron Skin requires good reaction like any parry mechanic and gives player more benefits when they use it at low HP while being less effective than just pressing Challenging Shout at the beginning of the battle.

You can completely skip this if you want, it’s relevant to the topic, but main idea is already pronounced. Now personal subjective opinion on skills that need rework or buffs. That is what Blizzard right now on Diablo 4. Imagine a doctor that instead of healing illnesses just amputates and cuts everything out without even considering how to fix it. Start buffing other skills so people can actually choose how they want to play the game. By nerfing shouts people will not stop using them because they simply have no good alternatives. What they are nerfing was indeed broken (like infinite screams or billions of damage to world bosses) and I am wondering how that even went into release, but they only nerf without rebalancing or buffing semi-useless skills that no one uses. After recent update it seems I was wrong, devs are clueless about what they are doing.

Told my friends that Diablo 4 is a game where you can play how you want and still be efficient, unlike in previous entries or PoE where you had to read a dozen guides to kill at least something at high levels and spam skills that you hate to reach end-game. Never followed any guides and was really proud about making my own custom build.
